UK Politics Thread

I think that's a genuinely terrible decision from Jess. She does a huge amount of good domestic violence work and to give it up over what is essentially a performative trap is ludicrous.

It it may be what some of her constituents want, but how does dividing Labour and stepping away from power actually benefit them in the long run.

This is exactly what Starmer warns about when he talks about some Labour members wanting it to be a party of protest instead of a government.

Should have let it be a vote of conscience given it wasn't going to pass. Or maybe Starmer is rightly focusing on discipline in the face of a a totally fractured and disrespectful tory party.

Yeah to choose a non-binding amendment from a minority party on the opposition benches to be the hill you’re willing to stake your credibility as leader on is a weirdly stubborn choice. I think I agree that you could make this a vote of conscience and spin the outcome as being evidence of your broad church instead of drawing a line in the stand.

Or he could even just say, abstain as this is a generic call for ceasefire not a concrete plan for one.

Either would probably have saved him from this hole he’s dug.

Alternatively, getting rid of those who’ll take a token personal stand against the party is better for Starmer to do now than later

This. You are smashing it in the polls, basically pissing all over the shit party.... And now you decide to point both barrels at your feet. This makes him look weak, the last thing we need right now.

I give up. ✌️

I assume Starmer/Labour are attempting to project actual foreign policy they'd do in government not gestures. As opposed to Liz Truss in a hat.

I don't know what the trade off is. Votes Vs column inches probably. Possibly losable votes Vs useful column inches.

Ultimately none of it really matters as it's all just narcissistic British politics relative to what's actually happening in Gaza.

This, times a million.

Yeah this labour civil war on Israel has been going on for a few weeks and in that time they have been increasing their lead over the tories. I don’t think the public are really paying attention.

A lot of it feels like more social media nonsense, rather than a sizeable chunk of constituents. Agree that it's likely this will be forgotten in a few weeks.

Yeah. I think most people on the march were doing so with good intentions so this isn't directed at people with basic decency and sympathy.

But I just see a lot of people using this as politics. Tankies on the left, Braverman and Tommy Robinson on the right. Even Sunak because he smells some Labour weakness. It's all just naval gazing and crass relative, to the actual horror going on. All the while British Jews, in particular, and British Muslims are just caught in the middle.

On this one I'd rather a sane cross bench consensus around something leading to a 2 state solution, formed and people treated it as such. Kind of like Ukraine. And yes that is far closer to the Starmer/Lammy approach. As I just can't work out how you do a deal with Hamas or root Hamas out in any humane way. I know I have no answers, and doubt many other people do either.

Edit: I live in North Islington. For clarity not some small white town. Though I did grow up in one.

Yeah 300,000 is low Vs the total population but it's huge numbers of people actually bothering to march for something.

I can't think of anything else as big that's gone on every weekend??

And yeah it's way more. I goto the carnival every year, it's packed and police estimate 1,000,000 on the Mondays. These protests have been miles in length and full as far as you can see on the drone cameras.

What ever the numbers nothing else has driven so many people to make the effort to join a protest.

It's up there but nothing else, isn't right en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_in_the_United_Kingdom

It's amusing how wildly the organiser, police and third party estimates vary so much. Anyhow Stop the War 2003 remains the biggest at somewhere around 1 million though the organisers claimed an additional 500k. The second EU referendum ones are also in the rough ballpark.

Both Iraq and 2nd referendum did not change the elections afterwards.

I'm glad I looked it up though as I thought the 2010 student protests were way bigger than they were. Not even top 20.

I do remember 2003. I sort of loitered around the edges of the Manchester demonstration then went to the pub as I couldn't be fucked getting a Megabus to London. Plus I was a student and therefore skint.

People are notoriously bad at judging big numbers and assessing crowd sizes.

300k feels like a low estimate for the big one at the weekend but there is a standard methodology which the Police usually use for these counts. I saw people on social media saying a million but that is obviously a massive over estimation. The true figure is probably sub-500k but over the 300k depending on time and location of the count.

That said, once you factor in all the other marches and vigils in other cities you could be into high hundred thousands. But you do have to take into account how poor people are at scaling, as in to get to a million nationwide you’d need multiple 100k+ protests and I don’t think that was reported anywhere even by organisers.

Even the bottom estimates and counts are still very significant numbers for marches in the UK though.

Question then is how significant is it electorally and the answer is probably not very. As disappointing as it is, the odds are that the next general election (like virtually all GEs) will be fought and lost on domestic policy and by the time it comes are in May, October or November even most people who are saying they’ll never vote Labour again will hold their noses and vote against the Tories.

Don’t forget Tony Blair won the 2005 general election by campaigning on domestic policy despite Iraq and Afghanistan being in the news right up to polling day. Foreign policy rarely alters who the ultimate victor even when its current.

Not that I think Starmer was right, I don’t really get why he chose this position unless he’s really that scared of the Mail calling him a terrorist sympathiser, I’m just trying to extrapolate how things will play out for him.